Articular Sonography: Findings in Healthy Subjects Compared With Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory, systemic and auto-imune disorder affecting primarily the joints. In RA, inflammatory synovium causes destruction of cartilage, erosion of the adjacent bone and ultimately loss of function of the affected joint. Newer imaging techniques, such as ultrasound (US), have shown promise in evaluation of RA. Many US scoring system have been used to classify and quantify the synovium, effusion, erosion and cartilage for assessing and monitoring AR. However, its use is considered problematical because there are very few data on normal joints and, at this point, there is no clear definition of excess amount of synovium in normal people.